Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Homework and More Homework

Burgundy worked her tail off all afternoon yesterday. Immediately after school, she checked out a textbook from her Algebra II teacher and took it to another teacher for tutorials. I picked her up from tutorials and 4:00 PM, and we stopped in to chat with her debate teacher.

As I suspected, Burgundy had vastly over-complicated the paper due today in debate. The teacher asked for a 7-10 page paper on accountability. Burgundy chose financial accountability, and proceeded to prepare a dissertation on the various angles and implications of financial accountability from the church's appropriation of funds to personal choices in Starbucks. Happily, the teacher backed up everything I'd told Burgundy about paring back her paper, and Burgundy left re-invigorated to finish her paper.

Meanwhile, she has a test today over Great Expectations, and she had three chapters left to read yesterday. She read on the way home from tutorials, then worked on her paper until her private tutor, our friend K, arrived at 6:00 PM to help her prepare for today's quiz over the last three sections of her current chapter. They worked until 8:00 PM, then Burgundy went back to the computer to finish the paper for debate.

She finally wrapped that up around 10:00 PM and picked up Great Expectations to finish that off while I gave her final paper a once-over for major errors. Now that I'm "in the real world" using what I learned in high school, I understand that it's a Best Practice to pass your writing to a friend or colleague before handing over the final copy. As a result, I feel -zero- guilt providing this kind of review for my daughter on her papers. It helps to know that she does the same for her friends. Knowing she'd finished the book, I printed off the Spark Notes section on Analysis of Major Characters. At 11:00, she finally finished the book. I asked her whether she wanted to incorporate my redlines before going to bed or before school today.

She chose the latter, and I bet she was asleep by 11:05. At 5:30 AM today, I dragged her out of bed and to the computer, where she began integrating my comments and redlines. I made her a breakfast "taco" with beans, onions, garlic, corn, and a ton of spices; basically, I fed her last night's dinner for breakfast today.

At 6:25, she ran to her room to get dressed. We usually leave at 6:45. Mark packed her lunch. At 6:50, I discovered she hadn't printed her extemporaneous articles for debate, also due today. Happily, this took almost no time, and by 7:00 AM, we were on our way to school.

Her Algebra II quiz is first period and likely already is complete as I type this. We won't know for a couple of days how she did on it. I'm holding my breath and praying. I'm also worried about the Great Expectations exam, but not nearly as much. Even if she bombs it, she'll still do fine for the nine weeks. This Algebra II quiz and the upcoming test when she comes back from break are her only hope of passing Algebra II this nine weeks.

Please keep her in your prayers!

No comments:

Post a Comment